Hacking scandals are more and more frequent this year, and it the White House or the State Department thought that they were secure and protected, they were wrong from the beginning. Nothing on the internet is safe from hackers, who are continuously working on phishing schemes and man in the middle attacks, with the purpose of stealing information, classified or otherwise. The State Department email system was hacked last week and people are pointing fingers at Russia and China.
The State Department and White House network has been compromised and their respective platforms went offline on Friday. Maintenance was being performed after the hacking attempt so State employees were unable to access their emails or public websites, for that matter. The system of the White House and the State Department has been fixed since, but the issue has raised flags about the security measures. Department officials are suspecting that hackers backed by a nation state, namely Russia or China, were at fault for the compromised networks of the White House and the State Department. China has been involved, indirectly, in many hacking scandals, including the iCloud celebrity photo leak, as well as the iCloud man in the middle attack.
Department officials believe that the State Department and White House networks were compromised in September or October, when hackers managed to infiltrate their systems. Rumors say that the hackers had been noticed in October, when the IT departments started working on fixing some issues with the White House system. If so, we are wondering why the State Department or the White House chose to wait so long to isolate the problem and shut down the infected systems. “The department recently detected activity of concern in portions of its unclassified email system. There was no compromise of any of the department’s classified systems.” – according to a department official.
Even if the attacks involving the White House and the State Department happened at the same time, government officials are not pointing finger towards Russia or China. That would be a risky move and a major scandal. Nonetheless, it is alarming that secure networks like the White House network or the State Department email system could be so easily infiltrated. While it is unclear why they waited so long to fix the issues, we should find out soon enough. In any case, organized hacking attacks are getting more and more frequent and China seems to be popping up everywhere. We hope there’s nothing serious to it.